Rua had a lot of problems. Captured by the Mythwalker, Ashborne. Hung suspended from a tree branch in a cage fashioned from the very wood of the tree that carried her that barely gave her room to move, only really letting her dangle her legs out the side. Separated from her girlfriend. Saddled with a girl that cimed to be the daughter she never asked for. Stuck in a death game from another world that was run by a narcissist. Cursed with a Pact that was barely useful most days, and a downright detriment all the others.

  But right now, her main problem was that she was kind of thirsty.

  Sure, she had a canteen helpfully supplied by said narcissist gamerunner, but given that she’d been stuck in a wooden cage for a day and a half, she had to ration it. And Ashborne showed no sign of wanting to refill her supply.

  Ashborne didn’t seem to want anything. He – it? – was content to just sit and be a tree. Rua kind of wondered what that was like. To just be, your limbs spread out under the sky, waiting for the next rain, and not worrying about anything.

  Even during her self-imposed exile, she’d worried. Would her crops actually take? Would she be able to find a steady source of food outside of tree moss and whatever was dumb enough to wander into her bucket? Would one of the glyph stones in her newly acquired cabin break down? Would a Dreamer-spawned nightmare monster break into her house and try to kill her?

  Most of those had ended up in the worst case scenario. Because that was how Rua’s life usually went. But she’d long since learned how to work around that. Adapt and overcome, survive to the next day.

  “Hey, tree, I need water to live.”

  Ashborne, as he had for a day and a half, ignored her. But that was the point. She wanted him used to the idea of ignoring her voice, either consciously or unconsciously. She’d been talking to him on and off for a day. At first, just demands to let her go. Then, demands as to why she’d been taken. When she would be let go. If she’d be released. What had she done to earn his ire.

  Of course he didn’t expin himself. His kind never did. They just acted in ways that their stories dictated. They had no real will of their own. They were just a whimsy, a dream, following rules that only they knew.

  For a few hours after that, she’d tried to engage him in conversation. Asking him about his day. What it was like being a tree. What was up with the giant burn along one side of his trunk. Why were there pieces of two broken Vexurians at his roots. You know. Normal stuff.

  She stared out into the swamp the entire time she did it, hoping for some sign of rescue. She checked on the link often. Both Otter and Sunny were alive. It was odd that she was so gd for both of them to be okay. Otter, sure. They were stuck together, happily so. But Sunny? She was an annoyance at best. Odd that Rua found herself relieved she was fine.

  No point in dwelling on the future ke-dweller. Time to start ‘making calls,’ as Otter had once put it.

  Rua opened her menu, and sent a message request to Sami. A window opened with some strange symbol in the centre, a rod with two thickened ends jutting in the same direction while an odd tone sounded. After about ten seconds, the screen fshed, and Sami’s profile came into view.

  She looked more haggard than before. Dirtier, her hair in increasingly more disarray, but for all that, she was still very attractive. If anything, it made Rua want to sit her down and take care of her, wash away the caked on grime, and run her fingers–

  “Morning,” Sami said in way of greeting, shattering where that particur thought had been going.

  Rua was about to protest that it was still night, maybe even apologize for sending a message at this time, but… that was daylight on Sami’s end lighting her. How did that work?

  “Sorry to… call you like this,” Rua said. “I’m in the middle of an emergency, and I need some advice.”

  “Is it a Mayumi problem? Oh, who am I kidding. It’s always a Mayumi problem. What did she do this time?”

  “Nothing.”

  Sami gave her a look.

  “Nothing yet. I am… in a situation. And she is about to be heroic and make it worse, I think.”

  “Is the trouble your desperate need for a bath?”

  Rua grunted. She definitely looked worse than Sami in those terms. Being dragged into the mud until she was fully submerged and then magically transported to Ashborne’s root system hadn’t exactly done her favours.She’d scraped off what she could, but it hadn’t helped much.

  “No. We were attacked by a Mythwalker.” She went over the details as best she could, even expining what a Mythwalker was, as well as details to not tell stories while in the ‘game’ world.

  “Really? No stories at all? No fiction? What do you people even do for fun?”

  “What do you mean what do we do for fun? We make music. We dance. We paint, and draw, and carve, and sculpt.”

  “But those are all skilled hobbies. Surely…” she got a faraway look. “No. I guess it makes sense. If you’re not sitting around, indulging in the stories of others, you find ways to make your own, even if they aren’t stories in the traditional sense.”

  “We also have games. And… I mean, how do you have fun with stories?”

  “If you ever saw The Princess Bride or The Neverending Story, you wouldn’t dare ask that question.”

  A never ending story? Rua shuddered at the thought. “I don’t… think I’d care to… see those.”

  “Inconceivable.”

  “Listen, I need… I need you to tell me how to tell Otter to not come rescue me. In a way that she’ll actually listen.”

  Sami’s face took on a grim look, her lips forming a resolute line. “No. I don’t think I’ll do that.”

  “If she comes for me, she’s going to get herself killed.”

  “Mayumi’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions. I tried controlling her in the past. It didn’t work well for anyone. If anything… her leaving might’ve been the best choice, for both of us. I just wish she hadn’t done it in such a shitty way.”

  “What happened between you two?”

  “I don’t know. I… thought I was a supportive girlfriend. Mayumi’s always been chaotic and self-destructive. I tried to fix that. I could’ve done a better job of it. I was controlling, maniputive. It wasn’t my best look, but I thought I was doing her a favour. Kept her to a regime, At first, it was all in-game. She was good, a natural talent you rarely see, and never made the same mistake in a fight twice. Learned quick. She just needed focus, I thought. So I gave her a list of goals, and…” Sami looked away from the screen. She genuinely looked ashamed. “I used sex as a weapon. At first, as a reward. And then… I’m not proud. I wasn’t then, and I’m less so now. I thought it was the only way to get through to her.”

  “But it didn’t stop there, did it?”

  “No. No, it didn’t. It excited me. The control. I’ve never said this out loud, to anyone. We were young. Both of us were stupid. I was just so convinced she was the dumber one of the two of us, and I guess I was wrong about that.

  “I tried to control her outside the game. I thought she partied too much. Did too many drugs. Not that she ever got into the hard stuff. Just weed, shrooms at the worst. But I came from a strict family. The thought of even drinking alcohol was abhorrent to me. So, I tried to get her to cut down, focus more on eating healthy, going to the gym, getting better at Galnt Stand. Helpful, sure, but I didn’t do it the right way.

  “And then one day, she was just gone. Didn’t tell me, Everett, or Il-Su she was leaving. We went to a convention overseas. We were gone for a week, while she was at home, trying out a new training method or something. And when we came back, all her stuff was cleaned out.

  “No expnation. No note. Blocked us on everything. Just came home one day, and all her stuff was gone. I guess I deserved it.”

  Rua didn’t know what to make of the story. Her lie detection ability didn’t seem to work through these message windows. It seemed to require being in the person’s actual presence. But even so, she’d had enough experience of feeling physical pain whenever someone lied to recognize the signs when someone did.

  The tale had run true. From the account of events, to the self-recrimination and guilt. Right up until the st line.

  “Lie,” she said, more out of habit than anything else.

  Sami’s face twisted into anger. “Of course it’s a lie. I didn’t deserve that. I deserved for her to yell at me. To tell me I was wrong. For her to break up with me. I didn’t deserve to be fucking ghosted. Three years. Three fucking years of my life, and that’s all I meant to her? Her just leaving

  “I hope you survive this Mythwalker. I can’t do anything to help. But I can’t control Mayumi either. No one can. But don’t expect her to be stupid about what she does next. She comes off frighteningly dumb sometimes. I caught her microwaving a bowl of peanut butter to eat because she was too zy to go shopping for groceries. Just nuked it until it was a liquid and dipped crackers in it. ‘Peanut soup,’ she called it.

  “I got so angry with her. I couldn’t believe it, that she’d rather do that than just… go to a store. Or even have groceries delivered. And then, she got me to try it. I still have her ‘peanut soup,’ sometimes. Where no one else can see. I…”

  She frowned, staring at something above and behind Rua, who turned to look. There was nothing there, just the branch that attached to the wooden cage she was trapped in.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re not as trapped as you think you are,” Sami said. “I’ve been dumping points into Awareness. A lot. Your fighting style kind of… inspired me. And bandits keep managing to find me in this stupid Waste, so I’ve been getting a steady supply of soul crystals. The wood’s weak. Rotting. The tree’s infected with something. I don’t know what, but I think if you rock your cage back and forth, the branch it’s grown from might just snap from the repeated stress.”

  Rua inspected the branch. Her own Awareness wasn’t bad, and now that the weakness had been pointed out to her… yes. She could see it.

  But there was also a lot of open air between her and the ground. The cage might take some of the force, but she’d be left with the rest. Still, it had to be, what? Twenty-five feet? Her Tenacity would take a hit, but she’d survive.

  She just needed a distraction.

  And then, in the distance, as if in answer to her thoughts, came a mighty cry.

  “LEEROY JENKINS!”

  “Oh my fucking god,” Sami said. “You need to get out of that cage now. Mayumi is about to do something stupid. I thought she’d at least come up with a pn.”

  Rua didn’t even let Sami finish before she began to throw herself at the side of the cage, sending it moving to one side. She ran to the other side as it rocked, timing it so that it was on the backswing so when she hit it on the opposite end. She continued her pattern, rocking the cage further and further in its swing. The entire time, she could feel Ashborne coming awake.

  She didn’t spare the tree a gnce. She kept at it, kept moving, kept throwing herself at the walls of her cage. And then the branch began to move. Not from anything Rua had done, but as the tree itself came alive. It moved itself closer to the trunk of Ashborne, but in that movement, provided just enough of a jostle for what Rua needed.

  She braced herself as best she could, but the pit of her stomach felt like it fell out as something snapped, and the cage tumbled to the ground.

  DorenWinslowe